This year's Rome Film Fest will be opened with Scott Cooper's western, "Hostiles" on October 26th.

At the 12th Film Festival, David Lynch will be honored with Lifetime Achievement Award for the special contribution to cinema. It's been 40 years already since David Lynch's first film "Eraserhead" was released, what is answered by the Rome Film Fest with the retrospective of his films and a special award granted to him. At the same time, the master of surreal environment, director, artist, musician, composer and author, will meet the festival attendees to talk about the three films which influenced his works. "By the way, one of them is Federico Fellini's "8½" - proudly mention the festival organizers.

This year festival will also be visited by Canadian Xavier Dolan which is considered one of the most charismatic directors of contemporary cinema. His first film "I Killed My Mother", the script of which he wrote when he was 16, had a great success at Cannes. Dolan will meet the viewers in the Close Encounters section, where he will speak about the specifics of working in cinema, directing and on script.

The same section will include a writer Chuck Palahniuk who achieved international recognition for his first novel "Fight Club". Palahniuk will talk about the American horror films.

Ian McKellen, British film and theatre actor, who's played many interesting roles on the stage as well as in the cinema, is the winner of the Golden Globe and the holder of Berlin Film Festival prize of honor "Golden Bear" in 2006. At Rome Film Festival, McKellen will talk to the audience about the great comic, Jacques Tati. Besides, the festival will screen the documentary made by the actor, including 14 hour interview and rare archive materials (never before published photos and theatre roles of the early period).

The one meeting the Italian audience will also be Nanni Moretti who's 8 time winner of David di Donatello award (given by the Italian Academy of Films), and his film "The Son's Room" got the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2001.

Vanessa Redgrave who's also participating in Close Encounters, will present her debut documentary "Sea Sorrow". The documentary about the migrants gone to Europe looking for the shelter was shot in Italy, Greece, London and Lebanon.

The section "Everybody's talking about is" will screen Rezo Gigineshvili's "Hostages" premiered at Berlin Film Festival.

In retrospective "The Italian School" the audience will see the films of the Italian "Golden Age" by: Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica.

In the frame of the Special Events, "NYsferatu" by Andrea Mastrovito will be screened, musically accompanied by Luigi Boccherini orchestra. Andrea Mastrovito is an Italian artist living his latest years in New York. He hand animated the masterpiece of Expressionist film, Friedrich Murnau's "Nosferatu" and this very version of the artist will be presented at the festival.

Rome Film Festival pays attention to the role of critique in cinematography, hence continues the discussion panel which will be headed by New York Times and Los Angeles Times journalists.